Science explained with humor, analogy, and pop culture. (Because sometimes you just wanna understand a thing…)

Science Scraps

jesus fudd

Is not the internet filled with little hilarities? So often I can’t share them with you because they really have nothing to do with nature or my current topic at the time. I just can’t hold it in. They must be shared, because what, if not enthusiasm, does funniness but make? So this blog is dedicated to the random tidbits I find along the way that I want you to be a part of. A behind the scenes if you will.

1) The Stegosaurus blog for example, and really every dinosaur blog, required me to look up image charts for height and size, and eon and era information so I could sound smart when I told you about stuff. You see a lot when looking on Google images. My favorite picture that unfortunately just wasn’t relevant at the time was this one:
The dude is waving. I love that he’s waving. “Hi! Dave here. Join me as I’m about to get eaten by four separate species of prehistoric carnivore of various heights for the benefit of your education.”

2) I wrote an article for GreenAnswers about how it turns out orange juice strips away your enamel, and in my research one site recommended a tactic to minimize contact with teeth, saying:

Yes, but where?!! Where can I purchase these “discount straws,” for straws in this economy are so very unaffordable, and I must “plan ahead” for the inevitable day when Jesus leads the rapture and I will surely be drinking orange juice with my brethren.

3) I listen to Pandora during my writing, because I’m not as obsessive about it as making my own playlists, and can therefore focus on the

polka was unable to save this man

writing. Pandora has ads unfortunately, which I mute after one second. So I have memorized one second of every ad, usually stuff like “What will Google offer?” “Home Depot” and “Hi, I’m Tom Shane.” But one day I heard: “Polka can save your life.” Hearing just this phrase I wished I could simply appreciate it without any explanation. But I had to know, and it turns out to be a slogan for Kaiser Permanente, as an example of music’s de-stressing effects. Yet I wonder, is the life that polka saves a life worth saving?

4) For my atheist party a few weeks back I was looking up various religious dishes. Mostly it was easy, but Buddhism was hard to come by. Until I found a site that was quite confident in its knowledge of Buddhist dishes. Google search proclaimed:

traditional Buddhist dish

“Over 3 Buddhist recipes!”

So, four then? The site turned out to be no longer available. So, zero.

5) A lot of my blogs begin with news articles from different sources, including:
a) the BBC website, who reported one day that:

“The US’ biggest particle physics lab appoints a committee to establish whether a new unanticipated particle has been found.”

People, people, did we, or did we not, anticipate this particle? ORDER please… And was the word ‘unanticipated’ really necessary? Can a particle really be new and anticipated? ‘Ah, there it is. Finally, I knew it was coming…’

b) the newspaper, who reported recently that a gamma ray outburst can be traced to a black hole (thank you, whichever roommate passed that along btw) and said that:

“The intensity of the outburst, measured in some wavelengths not visible to the naked eye, was as bright as a hundred billion suns…”

turtleneck sold separately

First of all, can anyone even conceptualize one hundred billion suns? Carl Sagan was all over this kind of talk and I laughed every time. He was worse though, saying stuff like ‘eight thousand billion light years away.’ As if breaking it down to thousands of billions is easier to swallow than just saying trillions. This stone is four thousand million decades old. What?

Second of all, how is something as bright as a hundred billion suns not visible to the naked eye? and if you are talking about a wavelength not visible to the naked eye, are you really going to compare it to The Sun, something SO visible we can’t even look at it or our eyes will actually break?

Suck it McDonald’s!

c) the NASA website, who recently headlined:

“NASA’s Hubble Makes One Millionth Science Observation”

Only NASA would actually keep track past 100 how many observations their Hubble had made. And observation doesn’t mean photo, like the picture shown implies. The one millionth science observation was actually a spectroscopic measurement, which basically divides light and records its patterns, telling us about the composition of a planet that an artist nicely rendered for us here:

possibly somewhat related to the 1,000,000th observation. note it is tens of hundreds times smaller than the sun in the background

That’s all folks. I hope you are satisfied with this behind the scenes expose, and do not regret your dvd purchase.

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3 comments

I read the Roo article, and what made the biggest impression on me was that between the scientific factual cited call-and-response in the comments there was still the peanut gallery commentary from people who had simplified the issue into less than a paragraph and stated it as such without so much as proper punctuation. Really, people? I suppose I expect too much. After all, were the humans.

I was that roommate. I claim all proceeds from the incorporation of said gamma article, but claim no responsibility from the gamma ray outbursts. You simply can’t discipline those little bastards. -Bee